Solar outdoor cooling in Qatar as new reality

Abstract

The outcomes of this groundbreaking synergetic study have been able to establish the viability of a sustainable, scalable and affordable cooling solution for an outdoor application in Lusail City, Doha, Qatar. The first segment of this study demonstrated the limitation of the proposed scheme as it was able to meet only 90% of the cooling demand There are few days in the year; when direct solar irradiation is low, the outputs of the solar conversion system will not meet the heat demand of the thermally driven cooling machine To ensure optimal human thermal comfort within the playground, another supplementary source of energy must be considered and adequate thermal storage capacity is needed to ensure uninterrupted cooling source at the evening. From an economic standpoint, this study has also been able to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of the proposed solution as the cost per kWh of the produced cooling energy is estimated to 20 €cents while the cost of the initial scheme was 35 €cents. Detailed analysis is showing also that there could be a further cost reduction if the surplus heat energy produced by the solar field could be utilized or absorbed by another source at periods when it is not required by the cooling system.